Mary and I started out slow. We had each been hurt, but refused to be damaged. It was the MySpace-to-Facebook-pre-social-media-insanity era and we didn’t communicate online much. Before our first date, an analog miscommunication led me to believe she wasn’t interested and I thought, “Oh well, another flirt bites the dust.” We didn’t have these tools to express every anxiety and emotional whim as they arose.
I didn’t see our initial attraction turning into something greater. A good, healthy summer fling with a pretty, kind girl who hardly got me into any trouble. A win, but alas, no more than that.
I invited her to an outdoor wedding for what I thought was our last date. A five-hour round trip in my noisy ’95 Eagle Talon on the hottest day of August, 2004, with a lot of people neither of us knew. I figured that would be it. At best it would be a tiring affair and a low key end to a low key romance.
We sat with my mother and grandmother and had a better time than, I daresay, anyone there. I don’t know how we did it, dabbing (read: mopping) sweat and laughing like mad hatters through the day.
We got to southern Delaware late, stretched out under the stars, watched meteors fly overhead, and at 25 I asked this 33-year-old to be my girlfriend. We weren’t in love, but we could see it coming.
Our relationship didn’t heat up, but it swelled and matured like time lapse photography. Ahead of the game, as usual, Mary felt and expressed her love first in early December. I didn’t come around until her birthday three days before Christmas. So I loved this gal and had bought her a DVD player. Forget the fact that she received one for her birthday, this was not going to cut it.
I wrote her a letter. I just found it and had all but forgotten that first Christmas gift.
It wasn’t a revelation or poetry, but no object could have come close to showing how I felt about Mary. I could have terrified her (and myself) and told her how I wanted to be with her forever, but I reserved myself to writing how this was something wholly different than I had ever experienced.
We were never apart long enough to exchange letters, but left notes for one another; expressed our heaviest grievances on paper before discussing; and constantly shared emails about new events to attend, my latest unschool win or loss, and her work day. I’ve even found emails from me that Mary printed to keep.
I’m blessed to have all those words. As that life with Mary gets more distant, the notes and emails and that most important letter are still here.
We have a lot of pictures, but the words interpret them, show us what they meant at the time, especially when our memory deceives us.
Blogging this journey through grief and into a new life has been vital, but there is so much more to share. I’ve been inspired to return to letter writing and send permanent pieces of myself into the world. Revive relationships, tell stories, and grow the joy I’ve always had in creating written works.
I feel a lot less alone when I’m scratching out a letter, I feel like I’m connecting to someone now, in the future when they receive it, and maybe again in a later future. It’s bigger than a moment. It’s taking a moment and recording it, translating it, and stretching it out over time and space.
God bless,
Jason